Can you keep your resident portal and still own your website?
Yes. Your resident portal, online applications, and rent payments are hosted by your property management software on its own domain. They are not part of your marketing website, so replacing that website does not touch them.
The short version. The portal, the application, and the payment screens live on your software vendor's domain and are reached by a link. Your marketing website is the part renters see before they click that link. You can rebuild the second one without disturbing the first, and residents will never know anything changed.
What stays with your software, what moves to your site
The same split holds across every major platform. Only the addresses change.
| Platform | Stays with the platform | Moves to your site | Where the renter clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yardi / RentCafe | Resident portal, online leasing, payments, resident records | Design, photos, floor plan pages, neighborhood, SEO, tour requests | An Apply or Resident Login button that opens the RentCafe-hosted page |
| RealPage | Leasing workflow, applications, payment processing | The entire marketing experience and everything that ranks in search | Apply and Pay Rent links into the RealPage-hosted flow |
| AppFolio | Tenant portal, owner portal, applications, payments | Community pages, galleries, floor plans, availability presentation | Portal links on your company's own AppFolio subdomain |
| Entrata | Resident portal, leasing, payments | Brand, content, speed, and lead capture | Apply and Resident Login handoffs into Entrata |
| AMSI | Resident portal, online leasing, payment posting to your ledger | A modern front end, which is usually the weakest part of an older setup | Links into your AMSI-hosted resident and application pages |
Product names belong to their owners. Capabilities depend on which modules your account has active, so confirm yours before committing to a build.
Why does everyone think they will lose the portal?
Because the platform sells the website and the portal together, so they feel like one product. In practice they are two different things that happen to arrive in the same contract. The portal is software your residents log into. The website is a marketing brochure that links to it. Bundling is a commercial decision, not a technical requirement.
It is also a question nobody answers publicly. Search for it and you will find resident login pages and vendor sales pages, because the companies best placed to explain it have the least reason to. The honest answer removes the main argument for staying on their website product.
What does a renter actually experience?
A prospect lands on your site, browses floor plans, and taps Apply. The application opens on your software vendor's secure page. They fill it in, pay the application fee there, and it posts into your system the same way it does today. A current resident taps Pay Rent and lands on the portal they already use.
The handoff is the same one they experience now. The difference is what happens before the click, which is the part that decides whether they click at all.
What about real-time availability?
This is the only genuinely technical question in the list, and the answer varies by platform. Some publish a live feed a website can read and display directly, with unit numbers, rents, and dates. Others keep availability inside their own hosted listing pages, in which case your site presents floor plans and current pricing and links into that flow for live unit-level detail.
Both approaches work. Which one applies to you depends on your platform and on which modules you pay for, and any vendor who quotes a live availability integration without asking that question first is guessing.
Is there anything that genuinely breaks?
Two things are worth knowing before you move. First, if your current website is a rendering of your platform's database rather than a separate site, there is nothing to migrate, so budget for a build rather than a transfer. Second, check who holds your domain registration, because that is the one asset that can strand a project. Neither is a reason not to move. Both are reasons to ask before you sign.
The questions operators actually ask
Can I have a custom website and still use the RentCafe resident portal?
Yes. The RentCafe resident portal is hosted by Yardi on its own domain, not inside your website. Your marketing site links to it. Replacing the marketing site does not touch the portal, resident logins, or payment history.
Will residents have to create new logins if we change website vendors?
No. Resident accounts live in your property management system, not in the marketing website. Residents keep the same login and the same payment history because nothing about their portal changed.
Can online applications still work if the website is not built by my PMS vendor?
Yes. Online applications are a function of your property management software. A custom site sends applicants into that same application flow, so applications keep landing in your system exactly as they do now.
Can a custom apartment website show real-time availability from my property management system?
Usually yes, and how it works depends on your system. Some platforms publish a live availability feed a website can read directly. Others expose availability through their own hosted listing pages, in which case the site can display current pricing and link into that flow. The honest answer for any specific system depends on which modules you have turned on.
Do we lose our payment processing if we move the marketing website?
No. Payments run through your property management system's own compliant processing, on its own domain. A marketing website never handles card or bank details, which is also why moving it carries no payment risk.
What actually changes if we build our own website?
The marketing layer changes: the design, the speed, the photos, the floor plan presentation, the search visibility, and who owns the site. The transactional layer, meaning applications, payments, and the resident portal, stays exactly where it is.
Last verified August 2026.
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